Reply To: Set up a holding company

[Rezwan]

Perhaps argument was the wrong word. The idea is we’re trying to figure out what’s the best way to get high risk research done.

Energy sector should fund more R&D, but for some reason, they aren’t. Corporations turn around and say Gov’t should be funding energy – it’s not their risk to take, they want to socialize the risk, privatize gain. And Govt – as Synakowski policy suggests, claims it is limited by funding and has to make the “hard choices” to cut off the “riskier” programs. This impasse is only going to get worse, with Republican majority in house vowing further cuts across the board, and angel investors desperate to find sure things to get their ROI. With current institutions and instruments in place, energy research is undersupplied by both market and govt. And everyone quick to screech about “waste”.

A really cool animation would be to show the energy economy as a machine, with money (currency) as the sheathes of filaments that move around the circuitry. Just like with any energy extraction system, you’re going to have waste. The point is to get more out than you put in. More, in this case would be bona fide energy innovation.

So you’d show different players and their strategy and their tendency to try not to spend on R&D (hoarding the money, aka, storing the current in their capacitors). Also, you’d show that a lot of this “wasteful” expenditure on R&D does get back into the economy. Money, like currency, never disappears, it flows back in or does some work. Just a redistribution…